Blinds
by Lady Bast
Summary: When negleting leads to death, what do you regret? Focus on a change of atitude towards AIDS


Disclaimer: I don't own card captor sakura

Blinds 

The picture lay crumpled on the floor. Sakura stared at it, dazed. The vacant eyes held a premise of misery, tears long forgotten after pain dwindled to a strange numbness. 

When she came home, what had she expected? Not the closed faces, the misinformation of those not wanting to face her, the pity and compassion for the sorrow they were sure she felt.

 She grasped her staff, summoning the power of the stars, that of her own creation. She felt it binding, creating a crossroad of possibilities ahead of her. But it never contained such despair. And her road ran read with revenge.

He felt the presence, the slight shift of power, 

And Time took on wings and was unleashed, bending rules and pace. It grew, diminished, enlarged, exploded. The students, surprise delaying their actions, screamed, each one of them trapped inside his personal hell.

Because time was no longer at hand. Eriol's gaze ripped to Syaoran, sitting still, his eyes closed, wrongly out of place. He dind't belong with them. He focused on the  _continuun _ripple, searching for her. And he run, trying to dispel her presence, because Time was taking an appearence, it's volatile wings gaining substance, humming with power.

And Eriol run. Run past the shifting areas, the crazed people, the come of others long gone. He run, Tomoeda the center of madness of a little girl. Her house stood yellowish on the sudden night, billowing like a sick parody of a nightmare. 

"Sakura!" he called.

Time trembled on her hands, her eyes grasping it's inner workings, changing it. The Clow cards always had a limit to themselves, a counter point standing against their powers. Sakura cards, as powerful as they were, worked the same. But they were hers,  she their power source, the inspiration that drove them forward. And this time, there were no boundaries.

"Sakura!" the scream, ten times amplified, shook her out of her reverie. She trembled, furious. There it was, the pain of being alone, rejected, outcast.

"Let them burn on their suffering, see how they taste what they lost and can't have back!" A vortex of light condensed in front of her, growing, encompassing. The city fell under the spell of the past. 

The void pulsed with life, old presences, tired reminiscences. And what was she trying to do? One last glimpse before... before there was nothing at all. 

On this dark place, full of memories, his presence was fleeting, old, a soft fragrance brushing against her face. She moved towards it, trying to feel more of it, but someone pulled her from behind.

Eriol stood nervous. His haggard appearence betraying his turmoil, he tried to look at her, tried to convey the words for their carefulness. For leaving. _I'm sorry_ didn't seem enough.

"You could have stayed. You could have helped." her mind reprehended.

But how, how to explain the fear? 

There was the fight. The strange ambivalence, energy flowing, a flood of yellow and white. Darting across the streets, menacing his dooming touch. They clashed, it and the guardians, Sakura a continent away. And his sword flashed, cutting air and, surprisingly, damaging it. 

The little girl was running ahead of them, chasing a lost balloon, her laugh filling the cold afternoon. And it swirled, intent on one more destruction, driven by the pain it felt. 

Impossible as it may seem, time streched,  a slow motion focused on the aproach of that evil and the losse of the litle girl. 

There was a rush of movement, and Syaoran toppled it, grabbing fistfuls of air, dragging it to the ground. 

How to explain the fear, watching it absorbed by his body? How to explain the distance they created, a loneliness pain reflecting on his eyes? He believed on his own capacity, the capability to deal with the world alone. But it hurt to loose someone close to the heart, to have your friends running from you.

 How to explain the unease masked as ignorance, their pretence that nothing was happening? Help came as the love of his mother. His last embrace.

Eriol let go of Sakura.

"Perhaps it was our fault. Don't condemn the world for our mistake. This time, we won't fail."

Eriol held his hand.

"We'll be here for you."

When his telephone rang, an euphoric Tomoyo blurting on the line, he never expected to end his day sprawled on the cold floor of her kitchen, the burnt smell of whatever-was-cooking unpleasant and sofucating. What upset him was the possibility of death, creeping slowly, inch by inch on his unresisting limbs. He had given up long ago, his mind tired, too unfocused. Deal with friends who didn't bear to look at you, whose touch was fearful, was too much.  And it stroke. Amazing how his mind drifted to the past, the azure colours of his childhood, the ever-present memory of  his father. What drifted before his eyes was a background play, framing her presence, whom he missed.

When he woke, he couldn't remember last night. Blurry and confusing, the spinning room didn't make things easier.He tried to get up. Someone grabbed him, and there was a shout. He smiled, bitterly. Such distace. Where was their fiendhip now? He fell, a dull thud registering on his brain, the pain a faraway thing. What was happening?

When he tried to get up, his arms failing him, the rush of blood on his hears like a wave, overcoming... And it just kept coming back, the sick yellow of damaged. 

The arms encircling him held the familiar warmth of those close to us.

"My little wolf."

His mother embrace was warm, his head nestled between her breasts. The rare display of emotion, her love made manifest, was a rare thing for Syaoran. There was always her presence in the back of his mind, an harmony manifesting on his magic powers, a scent surrounding him. Protective. Cold. Analytical. Manifestation towards the physic well of a heir, not hers, but of the clan.

But her warm embrace was enough to soothe his heart, to calm his reeling mind. His protests died as he remembered her words, his given name and the sound of her voice.

"My little love."

When she left, there was only the  cold.

This story is about the pain of losing someone, of negleting those in need of us. The point is to draw a parallel with AIDS and how the world still reacts to it sometimes. 

Thanks for reading. Don't forget to help.


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